


Gone

by cheshirei (extemporaneous)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, End of the World, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Memories, Missing in Action, Repressed Memories, Sharing a Bed, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse, a little fluff, idk how to tag uh, probs out of control huh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:02:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extemporaneous/pseuds/cheshirei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas has been MIA for awhile and Dean doesn't and cannot cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that the whole thing is a bit weird but it was based after a dream so hush. (sorry for any errors)

Sam was doing better, all considering he was never really one for killing, let alone all out war. His brother worried about him, though. If he thought he was messed up when Lucifer got in his head, Dean knew better now. Sam didn't talk much- or do anything at all, except for help out with the injured and wander around. Dean saw his eyes when Sam roamed, there wasn't anything there and it was worse than when the wall had been broken in Sam’s mind.  
He wished there was someone to blame, but this time there wasn't. The killing had simply started and it was relentless as it took lives. If Dean closed his eyes, he could see it everywhere. Blackened shadows of wings etched onto pavement, children crying, covered in grime and blood, confused and scared, the yellow light shifting and crackling under a person's skin as another demon is stabbed. Reapers had wandered, claiming a life, a friend, a child, a lover without mercy or second thought. Dean had done a lot of it. After time, he didn’t know what was right or what was wrong. His hands were tainted with so much red and he wished there was a way to clear it off, bleach it away. He was so sorry for what he had done. How many times had he begged for forgiveness, on his knees. Pleading. He used to rue the idea of asking for forgiveness, but now it was the rope he hung onto, and it was fraying under his tremendous baggage. He wished it all away, every day, oh he wished. But the grim reminder that this wasn’t a world where wishing things away worked was doled out and he had to live with it.  
This place was his home now, whether he liked it or not, which Dean supposed he did. Although it smelled accurately like several hundred people cramped into a warehouse, with very little regards for hygiene, everyone was kind. It was strange, to see Meg wander around, flirting in that rambling drawl that made her distinct with humans, angels, and demons alike. And to watch Gabriel, up in the rafters, lazing about, people watching as usual.  
He was a surprise when he showed up out of nowhere, alive and mischievous as always. Especially after everyone could have sworn he was dead. But Dean guessed that was just the way trickster’s were. As much as Dean and Sam demanded to know how and why, he told them nothing and gave them a sad smile. 

After arriving almost four years ago, Dean’s bunk was still orderly. It was hard to keep it that way, when it should’ve have been his last priority but Dean had never liked clutter. Neither had Cas.

He hated it, he hated not knowing. Dean should never have let him go out by himself. It was stupid. So many others, everyone who was still killing anything in sight are out there, and he let Cas slip out and go on a supply hunt by himself.  
Dean remembered every moment of that day. Waiting outside the gates, temperatures so cold that he could see his breath. Cas should've been back by then, it was almost dark. The worst shit happened at night, that was when the screams peaked before flatlining into horrifying silence, even a few miles away from the main city they echoed on and on. Cas was supposed to be back. It was just a supply run. He was running out of time, the gates closed at eleven until the next sunrise. No one was let in or out. That was the way things were after heaven and hell purged.  
If he didn't get back before then, he'd have to spend the night outside alone and practically defenseless.  
Dean waited. But the gates closed, the awful shrieking sound of the metal hinges grating.  
He hadn't remembered leaving. He only remember the blood curdling sounds of death. And thinking, _knowing_ , one of them belonged to Cas. Dean waited at the gate, fingers entwined with the metal, hoping that Cas’ fingers. As dawn rose, achingly slow and dimmer than usual, they gathered a search party. He had wanted to go with them, needed to go with them but Sam held Dean back, hands clasped tightly around his older brother’s arm. "You’re compromised." He kept saying, loud, yelling. "Dean if you go, you'll be dead, you know it. You can’t think without him there. I can’t let you go! Dean! I’m sorry!"  
He had to find Cas. Cas had to be out there, he was just hiding somewhere. He had to be okay or… Struggling, Dean slammed his elbow back into Sam’s face, and he heard his brother’s nose crack. He felt terrible, but the rising terror has overwhelmed him. Dean was dragged back into his room, and locked there, for hours. He remembered now being scared. 

And he remembered the three knocks, and the lock turning, and Gabriel standing there, a dirty, bloody trench coat in his shaking hands. 

__________________________________________________

The empty sky was as grey as the crumbling stone walls that towered around Dean, the ones that closed him in, the ones that kept him out, and the ones that protected him.  
Protected him, and not Cas.  
Dean knew the clamor of the people around him, he knew that all about him people's lives went on. Meg was somewhere, anywhere that Crowley wasn't. Sam was arguing with Gabriel over sharing the work load. Faces and people that he would never come to know, smile at, remember, bustled around him. But all he could focus on was the ache inside him. His head hurt, a sharp fierce pain pounding against his temples and he knew he should go beg someone for pain killers, but he didn't want to, and liquor had long ago stopped working.  
It was weak, everything he did made him weak. But he’d never be strong again, that much he knew, if not anything else. Any pain he could leech off of, any at all, short of inflicting it himself was all that he wanted. Anything that could take the numb and twist it into a new more demented state of being was welcomed.  
Everything seemed to him like a worn out photograph of a memory that he had once cherished, things were blurred, days morphed into weeks, silently passing, the ebbing dull ache creeping up his bones, pulsing in his marrow, hunched quietly at the back of his mind, waiting to take it completley.  
He could scream, if he had his voice. But that was lost.  
Dully, he heard his heavy camp issued boots hit the hard floor of the warehouse, as he walked between the crowd, them brushing past him, shoulders colliding against his, blissfully unaware of him. He knew Sam worried though. Sam was always worrying, that's what he did best.  
It hurt Dean to see the dark crease under his eyes grow, deepen, his eyes sadder as the days dragged on. Sam was just as tired as Dean. The end of everything had not been kind to anyone, and Sam had the heavy weight of guilt settled on his shoulders, all because he was too hopped up on the goddamn lust of addiction. Dean shouldn't be selfish, shallow, Sam was hurting too. His baby brother- the one he grabbed in the fire, the one he fought with, the one he bled for, the one he loved. A small burst of anger boiled up inside of him, and he pinched himself viciously, leaving a small but sore bruise on his arm.  
He hadn't left his room in a while, and his eyes gazed his surroundings, all of it seeming familiar and alien at the same time. The lockers and shelves that covered the far right wall rising high enough to need a ladder to reach the top of them seemed to be collecting dust. At least the ones that weren't being used. Some folk still left their belongings in them, but not many.

He was caught blindsided. 

_A gleam of glossy black glass, curved around the front of the helmet, concealing the smiling face behind it. There was the night sky behind it stars barely visible through the blots of dark clouds, and the silent span of the water in front of them._

Dean lurched forward, a shudder racking his body. Frantically, he pressed his hands to one of the concrete pillars holding up the high ceiling, which pressed down on Dean anyways, and choked down the sobs. He waited, breathing out the word help over and over, just in case anyone was listening. Frozen, there was terror and whiplash. He didn’t want to remember.  
Barely gathering himself, he went to the kitchen. He didn't want to eat, he wanted to starve. But he had to do it. Cas would have wanted him to do it, and even with the distance stretching farther and farther, Dean clung to it. So he made his way towards the other end of the large warehouse, oblivious to Sam sliding past him, feeling the harsh fluorescent lights glaze his skin.  
Phantom fingertips traced up his spine, and faded.

__________________________________

Sam was at the other side of the refugee camp, standing in front of his older brother's room. He took a deep breath and rapped his knuckles on the cold steel. The sound echoed, this end of the building being quieter. No one responded. Carefully, he pushed the door open, knowing Dean's habit of locking and securing things was long gone.  
He had left the lights on, but there wasn't much for them to illuminate. There was a bed, the kind only issued to couples or singles who worked for them, a big one, taking up the middle of the room. The sheets were wrinkled and bunched. Sam knew that Dean gripped them when he woke up screaming. The only other furniture was a closet, a few of his shirts hanging up. It seemed most of his other clothes had been boxed up and shoved away into the corner next to the chair and table. The only thing sitting on it was a dirty folded trench coat.  
Sam walked over to the side of the bed, and pressed his hand to Dean's pillow, fingertips feeling wet. He knew what it was. Dean tried to be silent about being weak, he really did, but from Sam's room over, if he was quiet, he heard the muffled sobs.  
Quickly, Sam left, desperate to escape the deadened feeling of the room, barely remembering to close the door behind him.  
His brother was going to die if he kept living like this.

________________________________

Dean knew he had to tell Sam, he needed to tell him that no matter what he does, no matter what he could ever do, Cas won’t leave. Dean sees him everywhere, and he knows it’s the grief but he sometimes wished he didn’t. It would be better if when he opened the door, he could see Cas smiling, hear him laughing again. It would be better when he stood under the trees outside and felt a hand pressed against his heart, that it was actually Cas or a dream of him. That when he curled himself into the bed, that the feeling of Cas wrapping his arms around him could be just that, and not a memory. Because memories were so much worse. Memory meant it was a thing of the past, that it was gone. 

_He can feel the warmth of Cas’ hand as the poor mess of the new human cups his cheek and runs his thumb in circles over Dean’s lips. The impala is getting uncomfy, the metal poking into his back, but Dean doesn’t really care.  
“Oh.” He says remembering, and enjoying the feeling of when Cas’ fingertip slides off his moving lips and his tongue flicks it. Cas blushes, and pulls his hand away. “I got you something.” _

Dean shocked awake, his heart pounding painfully in his chest, causing him to clench his eyes shut. He looked down and realized his fingernails had ripped holes through the sheets. The felt like they were going to bleed, but he didn’t think about that. Instead he got up frantic, and fumbled with the door knob before opening it and racing down the quiet, dark, hallway.  
It’s there, it’s been there. It’s always been there. He couldn’t breathe, as he rounded the corner to the lockers. Dean counted, forty six, fifty three, sixty, there; sixty seven. It was a locker at the height he was. Fingers shaking he worked the lock, praying it was the combo. Second attempt and he got it right, as the dial turned and he pulled down.  
The locker door opened, and it was there. Sitting on top of notes and papers and journals, there was an astronaut helmet.  
Dean didn’t realize he was sobbing as he lifted it up in his hands and collapsed to his knees, hugging the helmet so tight it broke skin. Closing his eyes, he knelt there, trembling in the dark, and remembered. 

________________________________________________  
“I got you something.”  
“Really?” He asks, as though incredulous to Dean being that thoughtful.  
“Yeah,” Dean says, grinning and stretching to the limits  
reaching over into the Impala’s driver’s seat and grabbing a large bag. He pulls it onto his lap as he sits up, and reaches in to pull out a helmet. Cas has never seen a helmet like it before. It’s big and bulky, even more so than the peoples’ who ride on motorcycles helmets. Those were certainly sleeker. “What is it for?”  
Dean grins again, as Cas touches the round oil slick-black glass lense and carefully slides it down over his friend’s head. “There Cas, you can walk on the moon now. Although I bet you’ve already been there.”  
“Not yet, Dean.” Cas said, smiling behind the glass.”  
There was the soft splashing as the water of the lake lapped against the beach. “You’re lying.” Dean mused.  
“I really haven’t been to the moon.” The words were earnest, but not as reassuring as the way Cas placed his hand over Dean’s.  
“I believe you, but you gotta promise to take me when you go.”  
“I promise.” Cas took the helmet off, placing it next to them on the hood. Quietly, and blushing just a little Cas pressed his forehead to Dean’s and then kissed him. “I love you.”  
Dean smiled, and held Cas’ jaw in his palm as they sat under the stars. He had wanted to say those words for so long, and Cas had beaten him to the punch. “That was my line.”  
________________________________________________ 

And then it soothed, all the depression, anger, grief. Deep in Dean somewhere hidden and locked up, it was all gone. He cried, and bit his lip, and a small, small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.  


Cas was finally on the moon.


End file.
